Edmund Arbuthnott Knox was Bishop of Manchester from 1903-1921 and has been described as a prominent Evangelical (Cross and Livingstone, 1984: 786). Knox’s theology of the Eucharist is presented in a Charge delivered to the clergy of the Diocese of Manchester in 1906. In this charge, Knox says:

“The true keynote of the service seems to be that of union with the living Christ by the spiritual and faithful partaking of His body and blood. Such a reception, and such union, has no meaning apart from the idea of sacrifice. Nor is the thought of sacrifice obliterated, rather it is strengthened, by the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ, by His death upon the cross, made there a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. That solemn truth we neither wish nor dare to question. But for the partaker the conception is that by the act of consuming he becomes one with the Victim, its death is his death, its life-blood is his life. In this sense, and in this only, is it true that the sacrifice offered once for all, and once for all accepted, yet remains for us an ever-continued life-giving sacrificial feast. We are partakers of the sacrifice that was offered upon the cross, partakers not merely by an effort of memory, or by an effort of imagination, but by an act of faith. The Lamb of God is, spiritually but really, the food of which we are partakers in that heavenly banquet; and the Sacrament, with its signs, is the means whereby we are thus fed. The sacrifice has been offered and accepted; but the sacrificial feast, which is part of the sacrifice, must continue and be carried on into the marriage supper of the Lamb.” (Knox, 1906: 77-78).

This seems to be a confusing passage. Knox begins by arguing that there is union with Christ which is spiritual and faithful partaking of Christ’s body and blood. The partaking by faith is suggestive of moderate nominalism, however Knox also presents the view that the Eucharist, together with the signs, is the means by which people are fed. At first sight this may seem to be moderate realism, since there appears to be a linking of the sign with the signified in a real way, in that people are fed spiritually and also fed by the signs. There is however, no clear statement of the signs being the means of grace, merely a means of feeding. This could simply mean that the signs are feeding in the physical sense in that the bread and wine provide nourishment for the body in a physical manner. This suggests that Knox is not adopting a position of moderate nominalism.